


Close Enough

by cosmic_llin



Series: Right Here By My Side: An Ada/Hecate Pre-Canon Timeline [2]
Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Awkwardness, F/F, Pining, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 14:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: With Hecate's own room inaccessible, she finds herself sharing a bed with Ada.Written for Week 1 of the Hackle Summer Trope Challenge.





	Close Enough

‘It’s a good thing you spotted it when you did!’ says Ada.

Hecate makes a noise of agreement, pretending very hard to be looking for something in her overnight bag so that she doesn’t have to work out whether or not it’s normal to be looking at Ada, who is changing into her nightclothes without having made any attempt at or request for privacy.

Hecate supposes she should be used to this - after all, she grew up in a girls’ boarding school too, and it’s not even quite been a decade since she left. People used to get changed all over the place, and nobody minded. She’d barely noticed back then, since she’d generally have her nose in a book anyway.

But she’s rarely shared a room with another adult woman whom she isn’t seeing. And she’s suddenly afraid that she’ll look too closely, cross a line that’s detectable to others but invisible to her. But will averting her eyes look prudish, or even guilty? Will it make Ada suspicious about things Hecate would rather she not know?

She’s not sure. So she rummages in her bag. She packed it haphazardly, in a hurry, transferred it across the school to Ada’s room minutes before they sealed off the infested wing.

‘We could have lost half the castle,’ Ada continues.

Hecate dares a glance. Ada’s in a nightgown now, thank the gods. A flimsy one that only just reaches her knees, but it definitely covers enough skin that it’s all right for Hecate to look at her as though she were wearing clothes.

‘I was just lucky that I saw the one in the staff room,’ Hecate says.

‘Lucky, nothing!’ says Ada. ‘You shouldn’t sell yourself short. Not everyone has your powers of observation.’

‘Either way,’ says Hecate, ‘I’m glad it’s being taken care of. The sooner the augur beetles are gone, the sooner everything can go back to normal.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ says Ada, sitting down at the dressing table to brush her hair. ‘But since we _did_ find the infestation in time and it _is_ being dealt with, I’m rather enjoying the excitement.’

‘Excitement?’

‘Didn’t you see the girls? This is all a big adventure to them. Half the castle uninhabitable, and they all have to camp in each other’s rooms? What could be more fun?’

‘They’ll be fit for nothing in lessons tomorrow,’ Hecate says, pulling her toothbrush out of her bag to complete her act.

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter just for once,’ Ada says.

Hecate looks over at Ada’s back. She could stare at her shoulders forever, although she’s not sure why. (She knows part of it, of course she does, she’s not  _that_ dense, but why the shoulders particularly? What is it about them that makes her mouth dry? She’s never been able to work it out.) When Ada finishes brushing her hair, she lets it fall down the centre of her back in loose, dark waves, and Hecate gets up and goes to clean her teeth, because this is hard enough already.

Ada’s reading in bed when Hecate returns.

‘If you’d rather switch the light off, that’s fine,’ Ada says.

Hecate shakes her head. ‘No, that’s all right, I like to read in bed too.’

Ada smiles. ‘What are you reading?’

Hecate’s learned over the five years they’ve known each other that Ada is actually interested in the answers to questions like this, so she tells her about the new potions research she’s been reading about, while she plaits her hair and tidies the few belongings she’s brought with her.

After a while, there’s no more putting it off. She’s got to get into the bed.

It’s just a bed. She gets into one very much like it every single night. Nothing to be afraid of.

Except that Ada is in this one, with bare arms and no makeup and smiling down at the book she’s reading.

Hecate lifts the covers and slides under them in as swift a motion as she can manage. She picks up her own book, holds it too tight, reads the same paragraph three times over without taking anything in.

Beside her, Ada turns a page.

* * *

Hecate lies in the darkness, listening to Ada breathe. She fell asleep almost the moment they turned the light out. Hecate can’t seem to drift off. Every time she’s getting there Ada shifts or makes a sound and it startles her right back to wakefulness.

Ada turns over in her sleep, and suddenly her hand is on Hecate, curled so that her knuckles just graze Hecate’s ribcage. Hecate, eyes wide with shock, can just make out Ada’s sleeping face in the moonlight, close enough to caress, close enough that Hecate could kiss her soft lips with the barest lean forward.

She lies there for a moment, frozen. Even through her sensible nightgown this tiny touch feels dangerously intimate, and her heart beats faster. Ada isn’t afraid of touch - a hand on Hecate’s arm, a pat on the shoulder - and Hecate has learned to absorb the current that flows through her in those moments, instead of letting it sweep her away. But this, Ada’s fingers against a part of her that nobody would ever touch casually, makes her head spin.

This isn’t fair to Ada. If she had known any of this, she would have shared with someone else tonight. It’s too late to do anything about it now, so Hecate does what little she can - she shuffles backwards, away from Ada’s touch, stopping when her spine is level with the edge of the bed. She tucks into herself, makes herself small to give Ada space. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep.

When she finally manages it, her mind betrays her. She dreams of Ada, her blue eyes, the curve of her jaw, the slope of her hips. She’s wearing a pink blouse, or a sheer nightgown, or nothing at all, and she laughs at Hecate, but not in a way that’s unkind, and she asks her about potions and Hecate’s trying to demonstrate an experiment she’s been doing, but then they’re in the clouds, and then they’re in the classroom, and then Ada’s holding her close and there’s something she’s not supposed to be doing but she can’t remember what it is while Ada’s lips are on her collarbone and Ada’s fingers are unbuttoning her dress…

And then she falls out of the bed.

By the time Hecate realises what’s happened, Ada is already peering down at her, looking concerned in the early morning light.

‘Sorry,’ Hecate says weakly. ‘Just… not used to sharing a bed, I suppose.’

Ada tuts. ‘I should have thought!’ she says. ‘It’s not very roomy, is it? Why don’t I make us more space?’

And she casts an enlarging spell on the bed. It’s big enough now that if she wanted to, Hecate could probably lie spreadeagled and not worry about accidentally touching Ada.

She climbs sheepishly back up. Ada, far away on her own side, is already halfway back to sleep. Hecate stretches out a cautious arm to test her hypothesis and meets nothing but air. Satisfied, she leaves it there and falls asleep.


End file.
